This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The author makes no claims to, but instead acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the word marks mentioned in this work of fiction.
Copyright © 2016 Brynn Chapman
THE REQUIEM RED by Brynn Chapman
ISBN: 978-1-944816-27-8
All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America by Month9Books, LLC.
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Cover Copyright © 2016 Month9Books
“And those who were dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
- Usually attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche
For Sherry
You are airidh (worthy), in all things, my friend.
1894, Soothing Hills Sanatorium
Philadelphia, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
“Jane! Jane, where are you? There has been an accident!”
Nurse Sally’s tremulous voice echoes down the sanatorium’s hallway, ricocheting off the walls like mad bats in flight. I close my eyes, press my lips tight, and keep silent.
“Patient Twenty-Nine!”
I flinch at the use of my patient number and slide from the hidden window seat, snapping my book closed to bound down the corridor. The nurse’s cry came from the direction of my room.
“Twenty-niiiine … ” a male, sing-song voice calls out through the bars. I swerve and dart out of his way, narrowly missing those yellowed, grasping fingernails. My heartbeat doubles as I spin and run faster.
What has she done now?
My roommate Lily is truly disturbed. I spend most of my time out of the room, out of her way, because of her howling, because of her—
I round the corner and skid to a halt, instantaneously shaking.
Lily’s long blond hair spreads out on her cot like a coquette’s fan. Her eyes are closed. Her chest appears … still.
“Nurse?”
“Jane, go for help. Now. Run to Ward 4 and fetch Dr. Grayjoy!”
I stand staring, blood frozen in my veins, feet frozen to the floor. Lily’s head gives a violent jerk, and I gasp.
“For the love of heaven, now, you imbecile!”
I run. But not before I see the wall. Not before I see the message scrawled above her bed.
Help me. I know not what I do.
Soothing Hills Asylum Visitors’ Salon
“Bravo! Bra-vo, Miss Frost!” Willis Graceling, my would-be-suitor, claps too loudly.
I wince, but curtsy all the same, deftly moving my cello behind me. I walk off the small stage and ease myself into the milling crowd.
Father claps as well, slow and deliberate. Everyone in the salon follows his lead, though truth be told, it is a distracted applause. These hospital patrons and philanthropists are more interested in donations and connections than what musical selection I have performed this eve.
The windows are fogged from the patrons’ breath and the too many bodies in this too-warm room, despite the chilled fall breezes that whisper at the panes, reminding us that winter is coming. My eyes roam as I try to calm myself—to prepare for the onslaught of attention. I am unused to such large gatherings due to my largely sequestered upbringing.
Crystal goblets of rose-red flash by on a silver tray, just beneath my nose, close enough to catch the fragrant bouquet. I snatch one and the waiter raises an eyebrow, but says nothing, hurrying back into the fray. I am used to the whispers of virtuoso, but the outright attention I do not prefer. I would rather wield the pen and music and have another perform it.
Colors now dance behind my eyes. I picture them weaving in and out of the wrinkles in my brain. Notes appear in color for me. The color-note correlation never alters, like my own multi-hued, musical alphabet. This ability allowed me to learn to play at a very, very young age. As a child, I merely wished to see the rainbow in my mind.
Papa strides toward me, black eyes narrowing as his substantial arm slides about my waist, shuffling me into the crowd.
He whispers, “That was very good, Jules.”
His eyes shift through the patrons, nodding and smiling, but out of the side of his mouth, he says, “But I have heard it played better. In your own chambers.”
Willis trails behind us like a bounding, oversized puppy. I can almost see the leash from his neck to my father’s belt. Or perhaps an invisible chain from his coin purse to my maidenhead.
I am to be sold, er, married within the year.
Father vacates my arm, and I sigh in relief, but he is quickly replaced by Willis’s eager face. “Shall I fetch you some punch, Jules?”
“Thank you, that would be lovely.”
I ghost to the window and wrap my shawl tighter about my shoulders to guard against the draft sliding beneath its frame. Outside, a vast cornfield dies a day at a time. Remnants of green poke through the blackened leaves—as if hazel-eyed fairies play hide-and-seek, peeking out of the gloom-colored stalks.
I turn to watch Willis’s retreating form, disappearing into the society crowd, and cannot stay the sigh.
It is not so very terrible. He is handsome … and kind. Better than many other prospects I have had forced upon me. If people were flavors, Willis Graceling would decidedly be vanilla. Though nothing is decidedly wrong with vanilla, it is predictable, and quite often a filler.
I bite my lip.
I always dreamed of sharing my life with more of a … curry.
A gaggle of what my mind has deemed society women descends. Women with whom I share no connection, no interests, but for the sake of reputation, I must politely endure their inane conversation.
“Jules, it was so lovely. Did you truly compose it yourself?”
“Yes.” My stomach contracts.
Despite the low din of their prattling voices, I hear it.
A trickle of fear erupts in a violent shiver as gooseflesh puckers my arms.
“Whatever is the matter, child?” Lady Bennington’s face pinches with concern.
I shake my head. “Nothing.”
But I hear it … louder. Growing louder every second. The music, wafting in with the draft, as if the dying corn laments its own demise.
I curtsy. “Please do excuse me. I am feeling a bit faint. Perhaps the night air will set me to rights.” And without waiting for their reply, I make my getaway to the back of the salon, toward the door.
I slip out to the darkened porch and lean the back of my head against the door, closing my eyes. A multitude of covered lanterns cast a yellow haze over the myriad of rocking chairs, which now move in time with the breeze. As if the hospitals past invisible inhabitants sit, waiting in other-worldly expectation. Listening. As I listen.
It has been so long since I heard this music. Childhood experience has taught me only I hear this music. It seems to live only in my mind.
Maeve, my governess, forbade me to speak of it.
When I was but three, I first told her of the music. Of the words I hear in the music. Not in every song … only very specific melodies. Not lyrics, precisely, but intonations … like a whispered message. The harmonious voice whispering promises between the notes. She made me promise never to mention it again. Especially not to Father. I heeded her warning, the terror i
n her round, dark eyes forever etched in my memory.
The notes now pull and tug at my chest, as if sawing through my sternum, managing to wrench my rib cage open, as the tones grasp my heart and squeeze. The music elicits unwelcome tears.
A single phrase repeats over and over, embedded in the sound, like a musical Morse code.
Save me. Save me. Save me.
I bite my lip, then whisper, “From where. Who are you?”
“You know something, Jane. What happened to Lily?”
Dr. Frost’s eyes are abnormally round—wild and wide as his livid mouth.
The leather straps tighten around my wrists, and I thrash against them. I smile ruefully. Three burly orderlies are necessary to contain me. Once a panic hits, I am as wild as any mountain cat.
My thoughts cloud as the familiar mental-mist descends.
I see the events as if through another’s eyes as my mind prepares to escape.
My dirty bare foot strikes out, connecting with the young one’s face, leaving a sooty streak. “You little—”
“Hold your tongue, James.”
The doctor stalks back and forth before me, his eyes boring into mine as the remaining three white coats firmly affix my ankles to the chair. I thrash and strain, but it’s futile. Tears made of fear and anger bead and stream down my face.
My teeth grind and gnash. I detest this room. The very smell of it gives birth to the raging panic.
It is gargantuan, once an airing yard—with a glass roof that cranks open and closed. My mind has labeled it Frost’s playground, where he has used his giant intellect to fashion every type of device—all designed for therapeutic torture.
To my right, the sloshing of a dunk tank. A woman, barely conscious, hangs limply from the seesaw as it plunges her once and again and again into ice-baths. To my left, three women, strapped to gurneys, retch into chamber pots—all undoubtedly have consumed the crème of tartar—its sickening mixture shall roil their guts and have them vomiting until their ribs cry out for mercy. Behind them, a second set of gurneys—these residents with black, writhing polka dots peppering their alabaster skin. Leeches.
I stare straight forward, panting, licking my dry lips.
But this … he has saved the worst for me. As is his custom. Frost detests me above all others.
“Please. Not this treatment,” I wail, channeling as much sarcasm as possible into the word. “I tell you, I was in the common room. I have no idea what happened to Lily.”
Or to Faith. Or to Candace. My two roommates before her.
Or the other three women who had disappeared off the women’s floor, as if into the ether, over the past two decades.
I hear the whispers among the staff, a killer is loose—either a patient as skilled as Harry Houdini at slipping his restraints, or a deranged staff member.
I am a suspect. After all, three of the missing were my roommates.
“You lie, Jane. You always lie.” Frost’s lips retract to reveal white, straight teeth. Teeth that remind me of white-washed tombstones.
Indeed, he is very handsome. A handsome, dangerous, deranged jackal, with complete and total power as to whether I live or die.
If you can call asylum life living.
I have none to speak for me. An orphan. I have been here, behind these towering walls, as long as I can remember. I know not even my last name. My only home is this land of divergent reality.
The clanging sound of cogs grind to life as the smell of oil hits, my nostrils instantly flaring; I break out in a sweat, retching. A learned response. The contraption shudders as my chair whirls into the air, my stomach dropping as I soar into the cathedral heights of the asylum.
The windows are open wide, the night wind battering my upturned face. I register the first droplets of rain before the machine veers, plunging me downward. Lightning flashes in the sky-windows overhead, and I shudder, my teeth clacking together like a skeleton’s song. My mind fills with music—sorrowful, weeping chords of self-pity.
I soar into the heights again, nearly striking the glass ceiling. The chair revolves slowly now, but as I am easily sickened by any circular motion, my head buzzes, thick with panic.
I gag, crying, pleading. “P-please, Dr. Frost. Pray, have mercy.”
I whiz past and see the manic gleam in Frost’s eye. “Up one notch, Nurse Sally.”
“No, pleeease! I shall speak! I shall speak!”
The revolutions increase again, and I close my eyes, my mind sloshing back and forth in my skull like wine trying to vacate the lip of a goblet. I feel my soul slip inward, preparing to depart. I was once mute for an entire year.
There were no words worth uttering.
“Slower now, bring her to me.”
The contraption slows, spinning toward him.
His face, the wall, the nurse, the other patients. His face, the wall, the nurse, the other patients.
“I said, Jane. Did you see anything?”
“Yes!” I lie. “Yes!” I will tell him I am bloody Queen Victoria if it will stop the revolutions.
The chair halts, and I double over, sobbing, heaving, and expel my breakfast onto my bare feet. My arms are still tethered so that I hang from the chair like a swooping crane in flight.
“What did you see?”
“Release me,” I bark. “Not till you release me.” I try to revive my courage.
To find my rage.
Rough hands loosen the buckles, and I crumple to the floor, my face drinking in the cold stone of the flagstones, ever so grateful for the pull of the earth and gravity.
“I-I saw her sneak out,” I pant. “The night before she died. She … she was meeting someone.”
“Who?”
“That is all I know, I swear! She swore me to silence.”
The idea is ludicrous. Lily barely recognized her name, let alone possessed the cognition needed to plan an escape. The asylum is locked tight with two hundred acres of vast forest surrounding it. A veritable fortress. The only way people depart are in body bags. Or the crematorium.
My mind whispers, Or they go to Ward Thirteen. And vacate in spirit.
I shudder. That would be a fate worse than death.
A tight grapevine of information passes from loose-lipped staff to indiscrete patients. Ablations are performed in Thirteen. It is supposed to be the fate of only the most violent, the most uncontrollable—but there were rumors.
Rumors that the missing girls perished there—doomed to walk the halls at night like shuffling, aimless cadavers. Not dead, not alive. No more than animated corpses—the remnants of their personalities let loose to fly away by the holes drilled in their skulls.
“Take Patient Twenty-Nine to her room.”
Hands thrust under my arms to haul me off the floor, and my cheek is pressed against the new orderly’s chest. The smell. He has the most inviting smell. Not at all like the others. I automatically burrow my face into it like a child.
Pain. With each and every breath, as if nettles have overrun my chest. Dr. Grayjoy says my mind changes worry and fear into physical pain.
Times like this, life seems too difficult to endure.
The specter of mutism lingers, threatening to crawl up my throat and squeeze my vocal cords to dust. It has happened before. To ward it off, I begin to hum middle C, over and over. Often fear overpowers me, and I begin calling on a God I am unsure hears my prayers.
Consciousness fades, then returns as I hear his footfalls echo through the halls. I fight to concentrate on the turns, to focus on where he is taking me, but my consciousness flares and dims.
Humming. His chest vibrates against my ear, and I struggle to remember what happened.
Mason. Praise Providence, it is the new, kind orderly.
His footfalls echo, and the sound ricochets throughout the high hallways as he carries me.
I instantly recognize where I am as the scents alter from urine to lavender. Plants I have pic
ked myself are strewn about my room in scavenged containers to ward off the asylum smells.
I am home. My room.
I feel my cot depress beneath me, and his large, warm hands cradle my neck.
A cool cloth presses to my forehead. “How did you come to be here, Patient Twenty-Nine?” he whispers, thinking me asleep.
I try to open my lips to speak, but—
“Shh. Rest. Sleep now. I will watch over you. I will be out in the hall, not far away. No harm shall come to you.”
His accent is Scottish. And nearly musical. I fervently wish he would keep speaking. About anything, about nothing. I find his intonations calm my heart.
He squeezes my hand, and the warmth of it is replaced by the cool rag. I raise it to my face, like a child would a familiar doll, and breathe deeply. Its scent, his scent, brings an unfamiliar feeling. It takes me a moment to pinpoint the feeling … Security. It sends me directly into a blissfully dreamless slumber.
“How was it, Miss Jules? The ball?” Abilene, my lady’s maid, inquires.
Maeve, my one-time governess, raises her eyebrows, feigning an interest in the fall gardens outside, her long fingers twirling my lace curtains.
I shrug. “Fine.”
Her shrewd, gray eyes narrow as Abilene gathers the sheets from my bed, rolling them into a ball. “And your arrangement was well-received?”
“I believe that will do, Abilene. Leave us now,” Maeve directs.
Abilene huffs, but she and her dirty bundle stomp out into the hallway.
I stand and walk to the window. The same vast cornfield stretches between our lands to the music hall. Our hamlet, on the outskirts of Philadelphia proper, is known for corn, an overabundance of yellow and green at every turn.
Maeve clears her throat, demanding my attention. “How did your recital go, Jules?”
“Well enough, I suppose.”
Her eyes scrutinize, as they have since I was old enough to toddle.
She walks over to regard me, resting her hand lightly upon my shoulder. “What is it? You can tell me, ma colombe.” Her French accent increases, as is her custom when she is vexed.
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